Eurogamer

Dragon Ball FighterZ is a match made in heaven. It's that rare licensed game that comes from the marriage of a developer and franchise who are perfect for each other. What Rocksteady did for Batman, what Rare did for James Bond and what BioWare did for Star Wars, Japanese studio Arc System Works has done for Dragon Ball. The result is an exciting, exuberant and surprisingly rewarding brawler that's one of the best fighting games I've played, and it's not just for genre enthusiasts either.

The first thing that strikes you is just how gorgeous the game looks. This is a 3D game played from a 2D perspective, but the characters, effects and stages are so wonderfully realised that you'd be forgiven for mistaking the video game for the anime upon which it's based. That doesn't even go far enough: Dragon Ball FighterZ at times looks better than the anime.

Arc System Works, which is famous within the fighting game community for the hardcore Guilty Gear and BlazBlue franchises, has done fantastic work making each character in the game look, move, sound and feel like their anime counterparts. Dragon Ball fights are famously over-the-top, and thus, so is Dragon Ball FighterZ. Projectiles such as the Kamehameha Wave fill the screen with energy blasts. If they connect, they trigger explosions that send unfortunate victims flying. Super attacks are inventive, sparkling high damage combos that go off like mini nukes. Dragon Ball FighterZ is one of the most energetic fighting games I've ever played - and that energy is infectious. You sometimes wonder whether the pixels are about to burst with excitement.

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Eurogamer


Bungie has laid out a number of positive changes headed to Destiny 2 next week, tied to the game's returning Iron Banner event and raid rewards.

And, looking further ahead, the developer has addressed the long-running criticism of the game's palette-swapping shader items - which were controversially turned into one-use consumables for Destiny 2.

Shaders, which change the colour scheme of a gear item, have attracted considerable criticism since Destiny 2's launch. Many are tied to the game's Eververse microtransaction store.

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Pillars of Eternity

Obsidian and Versus Evil have announced a 3rd April release date for Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire. The game will be available on PC, Mac and Linux.

There are three editions to consider - standard, Deluxe, and Obsidian - plus pre-order incentives. One incentive is a white hawk pet to serve as a kind of flashy parrot aboard your ship in the game - Pillars 2 has base ships, remember. Another incentive is a black pirate flag for your ship. A pirate flag!

The more expensive editions pack a few digital bonuses as well as some in-game tidbits. Most notable is the $75 Obsidian Edition, which grants you the game's first three $10 DLC expansions, which I hadn't heard about before.

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Eurogamer


A note from the editor: Jelly Deals is a deals site launched by our parent company, Gamer Network, with a mission to find the best bargains out there. Look out for the Jelly Deals roundup of reduced-price games and kit every Saturday on Eurogamer.

Just in time for what is most likely payday for the vast majority of the country, Tesco Direct is back on its voucher game, offering up a trio of discounts depending on how much you spend today.

Spend 35 or more and you can get 5 off by entering code TDX-PWFG, spend 75 or more and you can save 10 by entering code TDX-GWRJ and finally, spending 150 or more will get you 20 off when you enter the code TDX-WFGR during checkout.

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Full Metal Furies

Imagine trying to tell to someone in 1995 that the 16-bit aesthetic would one day become a kind of fetishised commodity in videogames. Imagine sitting there, cross-legged in front of their massive CRT telly playing Chrono Trigger with them, and explaining that in the future even though we can make flecks of mud look better than that whole town there, sometimes developers still choose to make games in 2D. On purpose.

The artisanal pixel art in games like Cellar Door's Rogue Legacy, and their new co-op action RPG Full Metal Furies, has come to mean something more than simply 'remember the old times?' though. It's become a shorthand for a slightly more complex concept: a kind of games history remix, where old tropes are celebrated and then turned on their heads, and where genres are expanded and blended with modern awareness. Mother Russia Bleeds did that for the side-scrolling brawler in 2016 with a nihilistic shrug and copy of Vice conspicuously in its back pocket. Full Metal Furies does it with an earnest smile, and an unabashed tendency to draw on the kind of early noughties Flash games with which the Toronto studio first cut its teeth.

Here a four-strong squad of eponymous Furies - read that title carefully to avoid disappointment, Furry enthusiasts - must take down powerful Titans using their combined prowess as fighter, sniper, engineer and tank in the classical tradition of Streets of Rage, Battletoads et al. They're a well-rounded bunch to play, all admirably distinct from one another in the heat of battle in terms of their demands and functions. Which is to say it's deeply gratifying to throw a sentry gun out while unloading your pistol into a plague of Leeches as Engineer Erin, likewise whirling around with a flaming hammer and pulling off showy counters with Alex the Fighter. Triss draws the short straw on Tank duty, handed a shield and somehow expected to enjoy herself as much as the others with it. At a stretch you could call her an analogue of Overwatch's Reinhardt, but slapping enemies about with your shield like an angry chef with a baking tray just doesn't do it like swinging a hammer. As for Meg the near-sighted Sniper, I probably shouldn't find her rather obvious character trait as funny as I do. She presents a tougher challenge than her trio of companions because, as you might expect of a sniper, she's only effective at range, and the screen tends to fill up with foes at an alarming rate.

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ARK: Survival Evolved

PixArk, an official Minecraft-inspired Ark: Survival Evolved spin-off, is heading to Steam Early Access and Xbox Games Preview this March, developer Snail Games has announced.

PixArk was unveiled late last year and is the result of a licensing deal with original Ark developer Studio Wildcard. It's an open-world sandbox game that takes the core elements of the main Ark series - survival, dinosaur taming, crafting, base building, and co-operative tribe living - and re-assembles them as a more casual, Minecraft-esque experience.

According to its Steam Early Access page, PixArk will feature a robust character creator and progression system (complete with skill trees and customisable stats), a voxel block building system, procedurally generated quests, an "infinite number" of voxel based maps featuring deserts, jungles, caves, and more, plus 100 voxel-ized Ark creatures to tame, train, and ride.

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Amnesia: The Dark Descent

Those with a love of the macabre and a steely constitution are in for a treat; Amnesia: The Dark Descent and its follow-up A Machine for Pigs are currently free on the Humble Store.

Developed by Frictional Games (the studio responsible for the terrifying SOMA), Amnesia: The Dark Descent unfurls among the tenebrous stones of a vast and loathsome castle. It's as much a masterclass in psychological manipulation and suffocating atmosphere as it is in jump-scares, and is generally considered to be one of the finest horror experiences a person can have in front of their video game machine. I can personally only vouch for the excellent first few hours however, because it all got a bit too much for me after that.

A Machine for Pigs, meanwhile, continues on with the series' Lovecraftian stylings, albeit with a touch more political subtext as you battle your way through a terrible, subterranean factory in search of your children, somewhere beneath the deserted streets of Victorian London.

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FOR HONORâ„¢

UPDATE 8/2/2018: Ubisoft has announced that For Honor's long-awaited dedicated servers will be introduced to PC on February 19th. Dedicated servers will come to Xbox One and PlayStation 4 soon after , with exact release dates to be revealed later.

The publisher hopes the new dedicated servers will result in better matchmaking, and smoother, more stable matches. This implementation will remove the resyncing, session migrations, and NAT requirements that players currently have and deliver stable connectivity on all platforms", Ubisoft stated previously.

ORIGINAL STORY 25/1/2018: Ubisoft has announced that For Honor's fifth season, known as Age of Wolves, will launch on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC on February 15th.

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Eurogamer

UPDATE 26/1/18: Rare has extended Sea of Thieves' closed beta after its "Too Early" bug locked out some pre-order customers from playing.

The closed beta test will now last another two days, and conclude on Wednesday, 31st January at 8am UK.

"We know your gaming hours are precious and our number one goal is to get everyone with Closed Beta access into the game as soon as possible," Rare stated in a new blog post.

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PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS

The Xbox One version of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds has passed four million players.

It's an incredible milestone for a game which launched barely a month ago, and which just passed the three million player milestone a fortnight back.

In celebration, all Xbox One players who own the game as of 31st January will be gifted 30k Battle Points to spend on cosmetic crates.

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